Afrobeat
The 8 Best Afrobeat
Tracks of All Time
Highlife and Yoruba percussion welded to James Brown's rhythm section in Lagos from 1969, stretched to twenty minutes and pointed at the government. Not to be confused with the later, unrelated pop genre spelled afrobeats.
- Origin
- Lagos, Nigeria, 1969
- Tempo
- 100–130 BPM
- Also known as
- afro-beat, africa 70, highlife funk
- Tracks
- 8
- Updated
- 2026-08-29
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Number 1: Fela Kuti & Africa 70 / Zombie
1976 · Coconut
Twelve minutes calling the Nigerian army a column of unthinking bodies. The state responded by burning his compound down, which is the most direct review any record on this site has received.
Also on 1976, Dancing to Bad News, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Number 2: Fela Kuti & Africa 70 / Water No Get Enemy
1975 · Coconut
The gentlest thing he made and the one people who dislike political music still love. A proverb, a horn line, and Tony Allen playing the most relaxed complicated drum part imaginable.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Number 3: Fela Ransome-Kuti & Africa 70 / Shakara
1972 · EMI
The template arriving fully formed: a fifteen-minute instrumental build, then the vocal, then the argument. Afrobeat's structure is settled here and barely changes afterwards.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — One Subject
Number 4: Fela Kuti & Africa 70 / Sorrow Tears and Blood
1977 · Kalakuta
Recorded after the soldiers came. The groove is as buoyant as ever and the lyric is a list of what they left behind, and the gap between the two is the whole point.
Number 5: Manu Dibango / Soul Makossa
1972 · Fiesta
A Cameroonian B-side that a New York DJ found in a Brooklyn record shop and turned into a disco hit. The first African record to cross over on a dancefloor rather than in a concert hall.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — One Subject
Number 6: Ebo Taylor / Heaven
1977
Ghana's answer, and a reminder that highlife was never only Nigeria's inheritance. Taylor's guitar is looser and jazzier than Lagos allowed, and the record swings where Fela's marched.
Also on The Waxonia Desk — One Subject
Number 7: Tony Allen & The Afro Messengers / No Discrimination
1979
The drummer steps out from behind the bandleader and it turns out the band's whole character was his. Everything you thought was Fela's is audibly still here.
Number 8: Femi Kuti / Beng Beng Beng
1998 · Barclay
The son takes the form, shortens it to radio length and points it at sex rather than the state — and gets banned in Nigeria anyway. Proof the grammar survived the transfer.